Oh well, I'm from St. Petersburg, Russia. I was born in 1977. That was the time when Soviet Union was big and powerful country. Somebody could tell you that Soviet Union was an 'empire of evil' and life there was like a nightmare, some other's opinion could be totally opposite. I don't want to fall into discussions about politics. All I can say that my childhood was happy and beautiful. I learned to play classical music on my parents's piano. Also I was interested in technics, physics and math during my schoolyears.
When I was 13 it was the first time I heared rock music. My first favorites were the Beatles. Their music explored in my head and I thought that it could be beautiful to be a rock music star :) Yes, I played Bach and Beethoven on piano but rock'n'roll was something new for me and in that time I thought that it's impossible to play it on keyboards. I wanted to play guitar. My parents told me that they would buy me a guitar if I'll work hard at their country house near St. Petersburg. I did it and I got my first guitar. It was cheap horrible acoustic guitar with an extremely high action and cheesy fretboard. Recently I tried to play it and was wondered how I could use it when I was a teenager!
Also in the age of 13-14 I started to write songs. It was some experience and it seemed hard for me to compose music so I started with the simple rock'n'roll songs built from the three basic chords, I, IV and V degree chords respectively. I didn't know that this kind of music is so huge field for songwriting and pleasure. At the same time I searched for ideas in the field of various genres. I discovered a lot of great musicians such as Elvis Presley, David Bowie, Elton John, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and others. Sometimes I thought that I'll be a hard rock player. But my search was complete when I bought the LP with compilation of Carl Perkins songs in a local music store. After it I realised that I felt in love with rockabilly music and I started to learn more about it.
It was a number of rockabilly players in St. Petersburg and in the age of 15 I won the local competetion beetween them in the nomination of songwriting. Huh, I became the best rockabilly songwriter of St. Petersburg! Unfortunately I was too young and I had only cheap acoustic guitar so it was impossible for me to play in any band. It was a hard time in our country, the end of so-called 'perestroyka' in Soviet Union. Our family felt into a poorness from a 'middle class' so I could only dream about good guitar. But I didn't want to stop my musical experience and I started to improve my guitar playing skills. I played by ear a lot of country and rockabilly soloes.
In the age of 16 I graduated high junior school. It became a time to think about my way in life and to get any profession. I had no ideas about working as musician so I went to study in the St. Petersburg State Electro-Technical University in the field of microelectronics. Also I started to work as a salesman in a local CD store. I earned some money to buy my first electric guitar and then started to play in some bands. It was just for fun but I've got some experience as a lead guitar player. I wasn't satisfied with my musical skills so I found a guitar playing teacher. He was an experienced professional jazz-rock player. He turned my face to jazz, blues, funk and fusion. I invented the big field to study. I studied hard and got an ability to play in professional bands. My first professional experience in music was working with various jazz, funk and rock bands. I left the CD store where I worked before.
In the last two years when I was a student I became a professional musician and started to work as guitar playing teacher. After graduating the University I got a degree of the Magister of Technics and Technology. I had an opportunity to work as a scientist in the field of solid state physics but I didn't want to stop my career in music. So I left the science and became a leader of my own rockabilly band called Neva River Rockets. We started to play my original songs and rockabilly classics. We performed a lot of gigs in local clubs. Also I worked as session guitar player at countless gigs with other bands.
Unfortunately St. Petersburg music scene has very hard requirements to the bands play lists. To have a good job here one needs a lot of covers of modern pop or 70's rock songs. But me and other members of Neva River Rockets wanted to play an authentic hillbilly and rockabilly so it was more and more hard to find a good gigs for us. Another problem is that life in our country gets more and more expensive but musician's salary remains the same. So Neva River Rockets split off and I was forced to find a good day job. That was the way I became a software developer (programming was one of my hobbies since school years).
Now I'm working as a web and database programmer everyday from monday to frieday and every saturday and sunday I have a job as a guitar playing teacher. Some of my guitar pupils already became a professional musicians. Also I'm a member of two non-commercial bands. The first band plays original rock songs wich lyrics are in Russian language. The second one is new version of the Neva River Rockets.